Listen to the Rain

Bandai-Namco: "What are your qualifications?"
Trailer Person: "I spent 2001-2010 making a ton of AMVs."
Bandai-Namco: "Say no more."

Watch on YouTube

Watch in 240p for the best experience.

From mid 00s Animemusicvideos.org removing all Evanescence AMVs due to a Cease & Desist order to this. I wonder if someone carried a grudge all this time?

Last night, sashagee and I went to a Sailor Moon musical.

I know very little about Sailor Moon and have no emotional attachment to it--I haven't seen a single episode of the original series, though I have seen Crystal, and I was not one of the people who grew up watching and bonded with it as a young child. sashagee is, though, so as soon as she heard that there was going to be a musical performance she asked if I wanted to go with her, and I said yes.

Our original plan was for me to come home, us to eat dinner, and then head down there and get to the doors around 7 p.m. I heard from multiple people that the merch line was insane and sold out extremely quickly, though, so mid-afternoon we changed our plans. She came down and met me after work, in her cutest red dress with her hair in odangos, and we went to Brightwok Kitchen, which was dairy-free, gluten-free, mostly egg-free, and thus while not technically heḥshered I at least felt comfortable eating there during Pesaḥ (my original thought was some other Asian restaurant but soy sauce has wheat in it so that was a no-go). We got some delicious rice bowls, checked to see if the tea store was still there (it was not), and then walked to the Chicago Theatre to stand in line. The line wasn't too long and we lucked out by all the existing VIP people moving through their line, so the back part of the main line where we were was routed through the VIP line instead. We immediately went through the merch line, got through in only a few minutes, and sashagee bought a branded lightstick (lit up in multiple colors and said セーラームーン on it) and a poster, and since we still had almost an hour and a half before the musical began, we bought popcorn and sat up on a bench on the balcony hallway and waited. We saw MomoManLove very briefly, talked with pearl.nongluk and bradford.bensontaylor about their struggles with the merch line, and saw gracielizabeth and pezroan waiting in the merch line which now extended all way down the downstairs hall and up seven(!) flights of stairs. They eventually got down to the front and came back, only to inform us that we were extremely lucky because the branded lightsticks had sold out and only generic Kpop-style ones were left. gracielizabeth had gotten VIP tickets so she was seated in the front with the bigwigs, whereas we were up on the balcony, and as the timer ticked down we took our seats.

The musical was fun! Which is to say, I had a nice time, but I was not one of the people screaming when Usagi did her first costume change and said the famous 月に代わって、お仕置きよ！ (tsuki ni kawatte, oshioki yo, "In the name of the moon, I will punish you!") The first half was a condensed version of the Dark Kingdom arc, which I've heard all of these musicals do, but it makes sense--being the first arc, there's no backstory you have to assume the audience knows, and it's the most theatrically-dramatic part with the love across lifetimes and the forces of the Dark Kingdom, here depicted as pre-War-style with neon and big band music. The sailor senshi fought song guys, Tuxedo Mask threw roses--all special effects were done on a giant screen behind the stage, where the supertitles were also displayed---they went up and down platforms and had fight scenes, and saved the world. If you're familiar all with Sailor Moon you know what happens. If you're not familiar with Sailor Moon, you would probably be in for a rough time because a bunch of stuff was cut out and I would have had very little idea what was happening if I hadn't already seen Sailor Moon Crystal. As it was, I kept thinking, "Wait, doesn't the villain have shitennō? Where are they?" (they were entirely cut)

The second half was a series of idol concert-style musical numbers. Most of them were reprises from the show, and the whole time I kept thinking, what about the theme song? There was a brief wordless version at near the beginning but everyone knows it and they haven't done it yet.

( Well, of course they were saving it for the finale )

We left and met up with people out in the lobby, but everyone decided not to go out to anywhere afterwards. Instead, we all just went home. On the way back, sashagee kept saying how amazing it was and how much she loved it and how glad she was she managed to get one of the coveted branded lightsticks. She gave it 10/10. I wouldn't go that far for the aforementioned reasons that I have no deep connection with Sailor Moon, but it was still a bunch of fun. Be prepared for the idol show, though, and make sure you know the plot. Otherwise you'll be lost.

A nerd symphony, of course.

A while back, I got an email that Distant Worlds was coming through town to do a concert specifically focused in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. I last went to Final Fantasy music in January of 2020, right before the Plague Years, when I went to go see the chamber music version of that same concert series that had all the smaller hits that you don't need an 80 piece orchestra to perform. That got me excited for Distant Worlds again...and then, well, you know what happened. 🦠 So it wasn't until much later that I actually even had the opportunity to go again, and then I wouldn't have been interested in the material (and sashagee was still not feeling all that well). But more time passed, and sashagee's condition improved, and another version of Distant Worlds, this time focused on Final Fantasy XIV and XVI said they were coming to town. So that was the one we went to.

After the standard opening--the prologue, the victory fanfare, and so on--they did a few audience hit pieces like the Four Fiends theme from Final Fantasy IV and To Zanarkand from Final Fantasy X, and then go into the program. They started with Songs of Salt and Suffering, one of my favorite songs in all of the Stormblood expansion, and did Tomorrow and Tomorrow since they had Amanda Achen, the original singer, there to do the vocals. That meant they also did The Final Day and Flow from Endwalker, and both times sashagee specifically commented on how Achen's performance was amazing. They ended with a chocobo medley, and then went to intermission.

After the intermission and a couple more fan favorites like Dancing Mad and Aerith's Theme was the XVI portion of the show, and I don't have as much to say about that half because I still haven't played XVI so the only exposure to the music I have is the FFXIV collab, and that means I'm most familiar with Find the Flame because that's the song that plays when you ride the Torgal mount you get in FFXIV, and they did play that (apparently in the game it only plays once). They also played Ascension, which is another big bombastic choir song--when you have a full orchestra and a choir, you might as well take advantage of it--and a couple other songs that didn't really stick with me, then finally ended with the classic Sephiroth's Theme.

I've been to half-a-dozen of these by this point, so I had fun but it wasn't amazing because a lot of the songs are ones I've seen in concert before. Sephiroth's Theme is a classic encore, for example. But for sashagee, this was her first time, and she mentioned she got goosebumps during some of the songs. We'll definitely be going back, especially if I can find another performance of the A New World chamber series. The music there is less bombastic, but much more varied.

Bonus picture:



The concert finished not too long after 4 p.m., and since sashagee had forgotten to eat lunch, we went to a nearby restaurant that used to be my favorite to go to before the symphony: the Gage. The food is great and the problem I always used to have--that it would sometimes take up to forty-five minutes to get the check after we were fully finished with our food--wouldn't have mattered since it was after the concert and we didn't have anywhere else to be, so we walked in, immediately got a table over in the bar area, and checked the menu. I got the fish in the end, because even though I'm more often than not disappointed with fish I get at restaurants since they're mostly tasteless and put a sauce on it that provides all the flavor, which tastes like mush with sauce on it. Despite costing $40, this...wasn't really that different, to be honest. Halibut, cod, tilapia, all have that whitefish "we taste like nothing" thing going on that more usual fish I enjoy like salmon do not. I should have gotten the coconut curry with salmon or the pear salad, to be honest.

On the other hand, the fried pickles and curry fries were delicious, and sashagee was very happy with the burger she got, so at least we'll be going back next time we go to the symphony. And we got home at 7 p.m., like your standard tired parents, and went to bed not that long afterward.

It's been raining basically all day, so there's a constant soft murmur from the rain falling through the leaves of the trees right outside our window. It's somewhat muted by the music playing on the tv, but it's just lo-fi with a cat sitting on a railing of a rural house. Laila is going to grow up getting used to seeing tons of cats with lo-fi music playing and hopefully she'll think that's what tv is.

This is the best tree on the street. Photo taken from my house, hence the other tree in the front, but I think it's a nice framing.

A few weeks ago, someone on one of the Discord servers I'm on posted that Night Tempo was coming to America to do a concert. I had never heard any of his music, but sashagee is a huge city pop fan (one of the playlists I remember her listening to a lot on Spotify when we first met is called "City Bops") and it came recommended by 4PlayerPod, so I bought two tickets and got ready for some future funk.

On Tuesday I went to work as normal, and then when I was, I went down to Grand and waited for sashagee to get off the L. We had two hours before doors opened and no real plans about where to eat, so we wandered around River North looking at the restaurants. Most of the places I used to go--Slurping Turtle, Imperial Lamian, that burger restaurant on Hubbard whose name I don't remember--are closed now and I haven't spent enough time to find new places to really recommend one, and we had just decided on going to a burger place when we were walking by Ema and I mentioned how good it was and how long it had been since I had eaten there. sashagee said, well, why don't we go here then, and so we did! When we got in there was basically no one in there, just a couple people sitting around the bar and maybe one or two tables full, so we got a table in the bar section. And it's a good thing that we got in when we did, because in the middle of our meal the place started filling up and by the time our main courses came it was nearly full and people were having to wait.


Hummus and pita, crispy potatoes (absolutely amazing), feta cheese and olives as my main course. Not visible here was the salad that sashagee ordered and shared with me, and in return I shared the potatoes with her. Not visible here is the gin cocktail I got or the chocolate mousse cake we split. Since we had plenty of time and were about three blocks from the concert location, we stayed at dinner around two hours, right up until the doors opened, and then walked over to House of Blues.

I have literally never arrived at a concert when the doors opened so it was eerie to go in and see the place almost entirely empty. That turned out to be not just that we arrived early--we had heard from 4PlayerPod that Night Tempo had mentioned online that some cities on his US tour had sold extremely well and some of them had sold...less well, and it turned out that Chicago was one of the less well-selling cities. Even when everyone finally arrived the room was only about half-full, and while I'm sure this was disappointing for Night Tempo, it turned out that this was the most fun way to experience a concert I've ever had. Much like the problem with tourist locations being all the other damn tourists polluting it with their presence, the problem with concerts is that there are too many people there and it's impossible to get a good view, dance without people getting in your way, or really have the best time until you get there early and stand in the middle the whole time. Not here. 4PlayerPod, his girlfriend, sashagee, and I all had a great spot near the middle when for the opening act--a local named DJ Mochi who was actually really good--and then Night Tempo came out, introduced himself as "Random Asian man," and got to playing.


One disadvantage of a smaller crowd size could have been lowered enthusiasm, but that wasn't the case here. Everyone who was here really wanted to be there, so when he got up to the front and started jumping around on stage, the entire crowd followed. We listened to some of his original pieces and a lot of funky remixes of classic city pop hits like "黄昏のBay City" and of course "Plastic Love." 4PlayerPod and his girlfriend had to leave about twenty minutes before the end of the show so they missed Plastic Love, but we stayed up until the end. And with a medium-sized audience, there was no crowd all leaving at the same time! An amazing show, and I'm glad we caught it because the ticket sales make think it won't happen again.

If you want to check out Night Tempo's music, his entire discography is available for $16.

On Thursday my parents came out and picked up Laila and thus began our weekend of adventure.

It started on a bad note, with workers unable to deliver most of our appliances, but after that Laila went off with Papa and Nana to have an exciting time and we spent most of the rest of the day doing not much of anything. sashagee fished up a bunch of fish in Final Fantasy XIV and I read and played Fallout. It was the tail end of Shavuot, the holiday where G-d gave us in the Torah on Mount Sinai, so I took it off and spent it at home with my family, eating cheesecake and ice cream. I was tempted to go to the Tikken Leil Shavuot at Anshe Emet, but maybe next year.

( And for the rest of the weekend )

It's antisemitic for The Midnight to hold a concert that starts before Yom Kippur ends.

I wonder if I can get there after neilah without missing too much of the concert?

Brütal.

A few months ago sashagee got really into Babymetal. She was playing their songs all the time in the house, having little dance parties with Laila, and then she learned that they were coming to Chicago along with Dethklok. I bought her tickets as a Mothers' Day present and last night was the concert.

The opening act was Jason Richardson, who I had never heard of before (I'm out of the loop) but is apparently a famous metal guitarist? And his guitar work was extremely good! He came out with no introduction, playing guitar over some recorded backing drums and bass, and it was fantastic--the kind of thing that once would have been a hard mode Guitar Hero track. Sparrow was sashagee's favorite song--that's Richardson in the red coat there playing guitar--and is a good summary of how his music sounded. He was wearing the same red coat on stage last night.

Unfortunately, his stage presence was terrible. At a metal concert, you expect the performers to have an attitude and get in your face (metaphorically), but Richardson was more like a new act at a comedy club. He made some self-deprecating jokes, trailed off a couple times, and then launched into more excellent guitar work. Well, there's a reason he's a guitarist and not a singer.

Also, Dethklok was there.

When Dethklok was done, the stagehands took almost thirty minutes to set up the stage, all while the temperature got warmer and warmer and the crowd got dense and denser. At the end, the logo flashed on screen, the announcer said the pitch, and Babymetal appeared:


I absolutely was not expecting a heavy metal cover of "Sōran Bushi," the traditional Japanese folk song. I even found a comment on a reddit people where people were like "Dokkoisho? What are they saying? Is that like Ganbare?" ( "Dokkoisho" means basically "heave-ho!"--"Sōran Bushi" is a sea shanty).

I knew very little about Babymetal going in, other than the memes and that one picture of them with Rob Zombie. Being metal lyrics, even when sashagee played them repeatedly I couldn't understand anything they were saying. That wasn't any different this time, but a lot of the metal I listen to is symphonic metal so I was used to the lone female voice floating above a sea of electric guitars and drums. But I was not expecting all the movement--I only listened to the songs that sashagee played, I didn't look up any Youtube info, I didn't read about their performances, nothing, so I had no idea that they had routines to fit the songs.

On the Metali Youtube video, there's a comment that reads:

日本の祭りの息を揃える掛け声や踊り、独特な歌舞伎の発声、言い回しなどの日化を取り入れて、ここまでのメタルエンターテイメントに仕上げるのはBABYMETALだけであり、唯一無二のオリジナリティーだと言える。最高傑作と言っても良いのではと思う。
"Babymetal is the only one in the world of metal music who includes these expressions so characteristic of Japanese culture, the sounds of encouragement and common calls at festivals and the uniqueness of kabuki. You could definitely say that they're totally original and their work is a masterpiece."

They're right. I never would have thought "You know what heavy metal needs? Jpop dance routines!" but Babymetal did and that's why people love them so much.

They performed for about an hour and then left the stage, and there was no encore. sashagee wasn't feeling that well with the heat and the standing, so we went straight home and she went straight to bed. But she got her Babymetal t-shirt with the fox masks on it--the same masks that the guitarists and drummer were wearing--which is what she really wanted.

According to wikipedia, "Before the formation of this club, none of the three members [of Babymetal] knew what heavy metal was." Well, they figured it out.

Friday afternoon, my father showed up and picked up Laila and left to take her back for a grandparents' weekend (about which more later), and sashagee and I were left to our own devices. I had taken the afternoon off and we originally planned to go do something in the afternoon as well, but sashagee didn't want to feel rushed, so I made reservations at a "dark, romantic" restaurant per her request and at 5:15 we left to head to the L and arrived at our destination just in time: Nomonomo Japanese-Pub + Grill in Logan Square.

I haven't been to an izakaya in years, ever since Izakaya Mita closed after the owner tragically died of cancer in his forties, so I'm glad that sashagee picked it! It was dark (though I'm not sure about romantic) and we arrived just in time for happy hour, so I immediately ordered the sake and sashagee ordered a beer, then we looked at the rest of the menu:

( Japanese food ahead )

Not pictured: the kara-age. The happy hour special had its own specific kara-age that we got and it was amazing, just fantastic, and then we wanted more kara-age so we ordered the normal menu kara-age and it...had bones? It was basically just American fried chicken except with kara-age skin. We ate it, but we had to be careful and sashagee had to use her hands because she doesn't have as much practice with chopsticks as I do--I ate it with chopsticks, which makes me want to try eating fried chicken with chopsticks to keep my hands clean.

The only problem was the service, which was abysmal. We were there for almost two hours, and much of it was waiting around for someone to ask if we wanted more drinks. Getting the check and paying itself took almost half an hour! I would go back because the food was delicious but I'd definitely make sure to block off the appropriate amount of time.

After a mile walk down Milwaukee we arrived at the Stan Mansion, just set among other houses on Kedzie, but with (fake) candles set up outside. The last Fever concert I attended had someone come out in person and give a brief speech advertisement for Fever itself, which was weird because we had obviously heard of the company since we were at their event, but at that time they were trying to establish themselves and I think had only been founded in the last year. Now they're years old and had survived the Plague Years, but we still got the pitch, though thankfully only as a pre-recorded advertisement. Once that was over, the musicians came out:


The concert was shorter than I expected, only an hour, and it only covered the console games with none of the handheld titles. They started with the overworld theme from The Legend of Zelda--perfect for a string quartet since the NES had four sound channels--continued with the palace theme from Zelda 2, and moved on through the other games. The song I was most looking forward to was the Gerudo Theme from Ocarina of Time, but I just didn't like the interpretation where the violinist plucked the strings--it was no Spanish guitar. The best song was the opening theme from Wind Waker, perfectly designed for a quartet.

They ended with a short field medley from Breath of the Wild, a game whose music sounds like nonsense when played by a string quartet, and then after they set down after the bows, someone off to our right yells out "Spirit Tracks!" and much to my amusement, that turned out to be the encore song--the Super Smash Brothers arrangement of the overworld theme from Spirit Tracks, which they called "Full Steam Ahead."

They skipped Twilight Princess, which was kind of sad because I was really hoping to hear the Western showdown song ("Hidden Village"), and they hadn't rehearsed together quite as much as they should have because I heard more than a few instances where someone played the wrong note and had to quickly correct to the right one. But like when I went to go see Vivaldi's Four Seasons by another candlelit string quarter, it was a lot of fun.

I wish they had had more comfortable chairs, though. sashagee told me she kept getting distracted by the people who were shuffling in their seats.

Before the Plague Years, I used to go to theatre performances if not weekly, then at least biweekly. Between Locked Into Vacancy, Starlight Radio Dreams, invitations I got from lisekatevans or worlbshiny, public invitations from actor friends on Facebook, or whatever else I decided to see, there was a significant portion of my free time dedicated to attending performances of one sort or another. The Plague brought an end to all of that and indeed to a lot of the theatre companies I used to go see, but one of them survived--Whiskey Radio Hour, a mostly-quarterly variety show. Their tenth anniversary performance was Wednesday, their twenty-fifth show--presumably they skipped a few here and there along the way--and since lisekatevans offered me a ride and worlbshiny was performing the Foley there for I think the first time since the Plague Years began, I arranged my absence with sashagee (who had done lisekatevans's hair that afternoon) and went to the performance over at Chief O'Neill's Pub in Logan Square.

I'd been there once before, to a Shanty Shipwreck show that it looks like I didn't write about, but I had forgotten that it was almost St. Patrick's Day and Chief O'Neill's went all out. It was probably the most consciously and overtly Irish place I've ever been and I've had a drink in Teach Ósta, the pub on Inis Meáin. Fortunately(?) that was just the anteroom, however, the actual performance was in the other room in the back, to which lisekatevans, afschifler and I all went and sat down at the last open table and ordered drinks while we were waiting for the show to start.

Whiskey Radio Hour performances are short one-acts or skits that are submitted to the show, who finds a director and then leaves everything up to them. This time the performances were:

1. Numbers Game by Kat Evans, directed by Hannah Blau: I'd actually heard this one before, back at Gateways before the Plague Years. It's about a future AI dating service that is designed to help form real connections, but it's mostly about the stories humans tell about themselves to each other and what counts as promoting your own #brand vs. lying. The interesting part for me, though, was that because I had heard this before I could compare it to the old performance, which was much more robotic. The actor playing the AI had a lot less emotion the first time I saw it, but this time the interaction between the human and AI was much more playful and I thought it worked better. When the AI kept asking whether the human wanted to cancel, in the original it just seemed like an offhand question. The AI seemed invested in this performance.


2. Peace on Earth by Joanne Freeman, directed by David Krajecki: This one was odd. It was nominally about the relationship between a father and his daughter, and the way that he seemed to keep secrets. It was also about aliens--about a close encounter kind of incident where the father's secret was that he worked at a nuclear silo, not actually as an engineer, but the second secret was that one night there was a ring of light over the silo and all the missiles deactivated, then went into launch mode, then deactivated again. There was no conflict so it was more of a mood piece, but I didn't really get a lot of mood from it either. It was more of a "here's a weird thing that happened to me," which is always hit or miss.


3. Biscuits and Bones by Janet J. Lawler, directed by Alexander Trice: This was a comedy short about a first date in the park where it turned out the woman was a little too into acting like a dog--sleeping in a dog bed, etc.--and she had decided to go on a date with the man because she caught him eating dog biscuits out of the bag. A match made in (dog) Heaven! It was funny, and fit well with "Numbers Game"--represent yourself honestly and maybe you'll find your true match.


4. Alabama Mermaid by Jessica Wright Buha, directed by Rory Jobst: I really liked this one, though the people I came with did not. It was tonally very different than the other pieces, since it was horror and it was mostly musical. A woman walking with her son near the river has her son snatched by a mermaid, and after asking the townspeople, none of whom help, she grabs a mermaid out of the river and asks how to get her child back. The mermaid says the child's soul is free and she'll need to build a new body for it, and so the woman dives into the water and, as her skin turns clammy and her hair grows long and weedy and her unblinking eyes grow wide, the woman builds a new body from parts of stolen children, but her son's soul has traveled on and cannot come back. At the end, all the mermaids sing for their children, implying that all of them were once humans who had children stole and became mermaids in the course of trying to get them back. I always like stories that are about how the supernatural is a terrible thing for humans deal with, and I really liked the music, so while my friends were surprised they decided to end on a musical horror piece I was happy with the placement.

The whole section was surrounded with a framing story by the usual characters about one of their "hexadecaversary" with their wife, and so he needs to get the traditional wicker gift from a "wicksmith." This involved a lot of puns ("Local wicksmith is a basket case") and a call to a Wiccan, thinking they were a wicksmith.

Live Foley was provided by worlbshiny, notable especially for the tearing sound of the mermaid getting body parts created by ripping up a head of lettuce. afschifler originally thought it was cabbage, but, we were told, ripping up cabbage is more for severe pulping wounds and less for tearing ones. She would know.

Both Locked Into Vacancy and Starlight Radio Dreams did not survive the Plague Years, but Whiskey Radio Hour did. I'd been seeing invites to its events for literally years, posted on Facebook by one theatre friend or another, but before now I'd never managed to make it out there. It was so lovely to attend show again!

(I started this before Shabbat, but now I've finally finished it!)

For the last month, I've been doing a game music meme over on a Facebook group I'm on, and I figured I'd repost the answers and some comments here so they'd be saved for posterity!

( Music time )

Earlier today, thosesocks sent me this video, and now I'm sharing it with all of you because it's incredible.

Watch on YouTube

This comes not too long after The Seatbelts got back together (virtually) to play Tank! again, and I never thought I'd be blessed by both of those performances in a single week.

Are you living in the real world?

Happy Setsubun! 鬼は~~外！福は~~内！

My weekend was taken up with other cultural celebrations, though.

( 新年快乐 🐭🧧 )

Date tonight with a tabletop RPG / theatre nerd, so we'll see how that goes. At least we'll theoretically have a lot to talk about?